EVIL~! alkeiper

It's more of a discussion starter. Sometimes I have more to say about some teams than others.

The Pittsburgh Pirates finished below .500 for the twelveth year in a row. Once again, the Pirates' ownership blamed their team's failures on market conditions. This year, in order to improve their club, the Pirates traded their franchise catcher or Mark Redman and Matt Lawton. Of course, there is a small snag with this plan, being that the team needs a catcher. Benito Santiago is just about finished, and Humberto Cota played 116 games in the last two years combined. The Pirates finished 13th in run production, and outside of Lawton, they did little to improve. Honestly, this isn't a very inspiring club to write about.

I think he was just inferring that Nichols will meet Hitler in Hell in the near future.

Next up is Harley Quinn, followed by the Californian and Treble. We're up to round six.

Select your own name on AIM and type in the chat name in the bar. Or, you can IM myself for an invite.

I have the chat window up. Invite yourselves to "TSMBaseball"

Besides the draft, we'll also discuss baseball in general. We'll try to have some fun with this.

I'm going to hold an AIM chat around 9:30 ET this evening, for the purpose of drafting up through the end of the fourth round. If anyone will not be around, they can PM their preferred choices, or I will auto-draft for them.

Bad scouting and drafting in the Randy Smith years. In remains to be seen whether Dombrowski can improve the system in the minors. Justin Verlander shows promise out of college, but he has no professional experience yet. Chris Shelton is a good hitter, and should provide a solid option at first and an emergency backup at catcher. Otherwise, there is not much there.

The Detroit Tigers compiled a 72-90 record, a 29 win improvement over their abysmal 2003 campaign. Their lineup was surprisingly good, with Carlos Guillen having an MVP season, I-Rod hitting to form, and Brandon Inge showing hitting prowess that I never thought he had. This year, the Tigers have cleared some of the dead weight from their lineup. Bobby Higginson and his sub-.400 OBP have been relegated to the bench to make room for Magglio Ordonez. Eric Munson was kicked to the curb. And Curtis Granderson looks primed to take Alex Sanchez's job in center. A quick word on Sanchez, if I may. Sanchez hit .322 last season. He was as bad a player as you can be while hitting .322. His seven walks brought his OBP to a measley .335, about league average. In 339 plate appearances, he hit 14 extra base hits. When Sanchez reached base, he stole 19 of 32 bases, for a 59% success rate. His caught stealing statistics completely negated any run scoring value he had. And Sanchez does not have the pedigree to show that this performance was an aberration. The pitching remains a problem. The Tigers finished twelveth in runs allowed, and they acquired no significant pitchers outside of Troy Percival (and Kyle Farnsworth). The Tigers' bullpen was next to last in ERA in 2003, so these are improvements. The rotation, however, does not show as much promise. Mike Maroth is a heralded young pitcher, but he's 27, and his K rate of 4.47 per 9 does not indicate future stardom. Jeremy Bonderman, on the other hand, IS a legitimately exciting young pitcher. Mark this one down. Jeremy Bonderman is THE pitcher who will step up this season. There is no quality in the farm system right now, so the Tigers will need to build through free agency. I don't know if they can build a pennant contender with this core, but they do play in a favorable division. Still, with the improvements that the White Sox and Indians made this offseason, the Tigers will struggle to climb out of fourth.

As for the draft, here's what we'll do. Tomorrow night at 10pm, we will run a live draft, for a single round. It'll give us a chance to bang out about 20 picks at one time, and chat about baseball. If you cannot make it, PM me a list of 5-10 picks. If a poster doesn't send a list, or if his picks are exausted, I will autopick. This will not take us past round four, so don't panic if you can't make it.

Right now we're up to Bravesfan, JHawk, and Beast.

I'm just fishing for ideas at this point. My general thinking is that even if we didn't have a draft, we'd breeze through picks on the board since everyone's online for the other drafts anyway.

PK's league is drafting at 7:30. Shall we try a 9-10 ET time to get together? This isn't to try and finish the whole draft, just to draft a few rounds, share some laughs, and have some fun with this. Anyone who can't make it can PM me some picks.

did you personally pick the two for Tom? I think auto-picks should not be the top possible picks, but rather maybe the 5th best possible pick of each position... just my opinion. I try to take the best players possible. In this case, since Tom is a Baltimore product, I picked two prominent Baltimore Orioles.

Trades will be allowed at the conclusion of the trade. I didn't want them mid-draft because the results are complicated enough as it is. As for Greenberg, his 1940 season was almost as good at the plate as his 58 homer season a few years before. When you take the defensive position into account, 1940 just might be his best season anyway. So I can use that one in the simulation if you like.

Ok guys. Dr. Tom selects SS Cal Ripken Jr. and OF Frank Robinson. If Tom doesn't like either, he can exchange them for whoever is still in the pool. I select P Kid Nichols.

I've got work til 6pm, so when I get back, if Tom hasn't picked, I'll run the autopicks and then make my own selection.

I'll produce reports either each month, or each quarter of the season.

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays lost 91 games last year. Whereas most organizations would see the season as a colossal failure, it was the most successful season in Devil Rays history. The Devil Rays feature a ton of young talent, but it is questionable whether the organization possesses the know-how to build a solid team around them. The hitting talent is there. The question is whether the young pitchers can step up. Scott Kazmir (21), Doug Waechter (24), and Dewon Brazleton (25) frm a young nucleus of pitching. However, neither Waechter or Brazleton have anything resembling good peripherals. The team also lacks a dominant arm in the bullpen. If Hideo Nomo somehow regains his ability, and if the young pitchers can step forward, this team MIGHT finish better than last place.

No.

Fuck. That was my secret late round pick. Oh well.

Incidently, thank you to the mod who has kept up the picks list in my absense.

I don't think he's been to the computer. Tom has TWO picks, and then we run backwards again, so its myself, Brian and Vern I believe.

Ugh. 3pm Sunday is no good. I can't make it until 7.